DEARTH EXCHANGED FOR PLENTY
A. A. Bellamy
2 Samuel 9: 1–8, 11; Genesis 41: 47–49
What I wish to draw attention to in these two passages is a scene of plenty, in contrast to dearth. The place where Mephibosheth was, Lodebar, means a place of no pasture. That may be the case in the state of persons’ souls. They may be surrounded by plenty in a material way and yet as to the state of their soul it may be for them a place of no pasture. David is enthroned in this passage. He is in the place of power. He is exercising his administration in favour of some who might be deemed unlikely persons, the last to be thought of by David. “Is there yet any left”, he says, “of the house of Saul?”. It was Saul who pursued David “as when they hunt a partridge on the mountains”, 1 Samuel 26: 20.
How the world has treated Christ we know very well. Men, especially religious persons, pursued Him relentlessly. Finally they cast Him out and crucified Him. When God in the Person of Christ came into this world, man, so far as he could and as soon as he could, turned Him out. What an issue that is! The statesmen of this world are engaged with what they consider to be the greatest issues, but this is greater. The issue is how the world has treated the Son of God and continues to treat Him. It says of some persons that they have trodden under foot the Son of God and crucify Him for themselves, and that they have insulted the Spirit of grace, Hebrews 6: 6 and 10: 29. These scriptures refer to apostates from christianity, persons who have been, or may be as yet, in the sphere of divine light where God’s name is known and revealed, and yet turn away from the light.
Well, it makes it all the more wonderful that David, typical of Christ, should be thinking of “any left of the house of Saul”, as much as to say, There may have been many who have come into the blessing, but there may be some who have not. “Is there yet any left?” I wonder if there is in this company anyone belonging, so to speak, to the house of Saul. There was one, this man Mephibosheth, a lame man; he had suffered an accident. Sometimes we say that his nurse dropped him, but Scripture does not say that. It says that he fell (2 Samuel 4: 4), and the fact is, dear friends, that every one of us comes from fallen stock. Not only are we sinners, but we are lost as to our estate as men and women according to the flesh, fallen. How wonderful it is that God tonight, from His throne an high, should have to say not only to guilty sinners but to fallen man.
We rather underestimate the significance of what we speak of as ‘the fall’. God made man and He put him in an environment bespeaking all the goodness of a Creator God, and man would rather believe the devil than God. He disobeyed God. The government of God followed. He drove man out of paradise, and he cannot get back again. Neither does God intend that he shall, not into that earthly paradise. Men may strive for it with all the inventiveness, all the capacity and all the resources that they have. They may try to produce an earthly paradise, but God has no intention that man should be reinstated in an earthly paradise, in innocence. God’s thought is not man in innocence but man in righteousness. Hymn 212 says, ‘Man in righteousness is there’. Christ is in heaven, and others are going to be there, because He is there.
Now into this scene of plenty a man was brought from a distance, and not only brought, but it says he came. He came to David. He was not an unwilling person. It is a great thing to be willing when God appeals, when He touches your conscience and reaches your heart. “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power”, Psalm 110: 3. Here is one of those who are willing. What kind of a man is he? A king’s son, of royal lineage. You could speak of ‘the glories of his blood and state’, but they are shadows, not substantial. Here is a lame prince, coming to David. Will you come to Jesus? He came, a king’s son. He says, “Such a dead dog as I am”. That was his own estimate of himself. As another said once, ‘All the bark and the bite had gone out of him’; not only a dog, but a dead one. It was the Syrophoenician woman who spoke of the dogs. “Even the dogs”, she said, “eat of the crumbs which fall from the table of their masters”, Matthew 15: 27. Would grace meet such a condition? Surely it would. Is that condition here? “Such a dead dog as I am”. I might say, ‘I am sorry for the thing I did, I will not do it again’. It would be right to say that, to judge myself for what I have done. But to judge myself for what I am is a much deeper thing.
Such a man was Mephibosheth. He says, ‘I am of the worst kind’. David said, ‘Nothing but the best for you’. He is to be brought into a scene of plenty. He is to enjoy high society, not earthly, but heavenly, the king’s sons and the king’s table, and to eat bread continually there. Do you know anything that the world can offer to be compared with that—to eat bread continually in suited company in the presence of the King and at His table? This is the blessing in the heart of God for a repentant sinner. You say, It speaks of the greatest consideration for the sinner—and surely it does; but the point is, it is David’s delight to do it, as it was the father’s delight in Luke 15 to have the son clothed in the best robe. It was for the father’s pleasure. The son would have said, “Make me as one of thy hired servants”. He had no sense at that time of what was in the heart of his father, and it is a fact that many christians have not a full sense of what is in the Father’s heart in blessing.
Now the gospel comes to us that we might be enlightened as to these things and responsive to them. So Mephibosheth is brought into this wonderful setting as a king’s son and to sit at David’s table and, mark this, to eat bread continually. He would not willingly miss any meeting. He certainly would not miss lightly the breaking of bread, to eat bread in that sense.
What a privilege! Think of the claim the Lord Jesus has upon us, that we are His, fruit of redemption. His claim is paramount. He said before He died, “This do in remembrance of me”, 1 Corinthians 11: 24. One cannot understand how a true believer can fail to do it, how anyone could be indifferent to the appeal of the love of Christ to call Him to mind. It was said of the cup-bearer in Joseph’s day that he forgot Joseph. How could you forget? The Lord does not forget us. He has never forgotten us for a moment. His saints are always in His heart, every one of them. God says through His prophet, “Can a woman forget her sucking child ... Even these forget, but I will not forget thee”, Isaiah 49: 15. And it is so. There is no mother, however much she loves her child, but at some moment or another the child is out of her mind; it cannot be otherwise. But God says of His people, “I will not forget thee”. O, what a thing it is to know God, revealed in Jesus!
Now in Joseph’s case we have a state of things which is described as “exceeding much”. In the seven years of plenty “the land brought forth by handfuls”. It was so much that they left off numbering. It says “it was without number”. And yet it brought forth “by handfuls”.
There was that which could be appropriated by any person who had a hand, even if their hand was quite a small one, a boy’s hand or a girl’s hand. You know these things are for boys and girls. You say, ‘My hand is very small, and my heart is small’. Would you like Jesus to fill them, to fill your hand with Himself, and your heart? He has great regard for young people of all ages, even quite small people, small enough to take up in His arms. It says at one point, “Having taken them in his arms … he blessed them”, Mark 10: 15.
Then there were older ones. One of them had died. His mother was a widow; he was the only son of his mother and they were carrying him out to bury him. The Lord spoke to him as they carried him out on the bier and said, “Youth, I say to thee, Wake up”, Luke 7: 14. O, we long that the youth of the present day may hear the voice of Christ! He is speaking to youth, not only to old people, or very young people, but to youth. “Youth, I say to thee, Wake up. And the dead sat up and began to speak”, and it says that Jesus “gave him to his mother”. That is, he was not left by the roadside, nor was he handed over to someone else, he was put where there was affection for him. Persons who are blessed in that sense are put in an environment where there is affection. The mother is there. “Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother”, Galatians 4: 26
Well, I am speaking of Joseph. It says that “he gathered up all the food of the seven years”. What years they must have been!—like the days of Jesus. You read the gospels and you get some sense of the food of the seven years, the handfuls of it, and how much was there—more than is recorded. John says, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they were written one by one, I suppose that not even the world itself would contain the books written”, John 21: 25. It is like what they did here, “they left off numbering; for it was without number”. I should like our hearts to get a real sense tonight of this scene of plenty, this wonderful administration of wealth and of food. It is not always a question of food. The Lord has other things. He says to some, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold purified by fire … and white garments … and eye-salve”, Revelation 3: 18. These things the Lord has, and you can have them on the simple principle of coming to Him and having to do with Him. “Buy of me”; there are no agents in that sense, there is no representation. It is a question, dear friends, of a personal transaction with the Saviour.
It was so here with Joseph. It says, “The people cried to Pharaoh for bread; and Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, Go to Joseph “(Genesis 41: 55). That is where it is. How he managed to deal with all those thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people we do not know, but they had to go to him. Notice that, Pharaoh says, “What he says to you, that do”. That is important. Many would like to have the blessing and then go off in the pursuit of what pleases them, but that is not God’s thought. Certainly He desires that you may have the blessing, but then that you may come under the direction and the control of our Lord Jesus Christ. “What he says to you, that do”. The Lord has great affairs, great operations, on hand, and He will have persons to engage with Him in what He is doing, as with David when some came and he said, “If ye come peaceably to me to help me, my heart shall be knit unto you; but if to betray me …”, then it would not be so (1 Chronicles 12: 17). But then one man answered, “Thine we are, David”. He said that in the power of the Spirit, and as soon as you come under the domination of Christ you find what a resource you have in the Holy Spirit.
Do not think that the Spirit is given to persons who are not prepared to accept the lordship of Christ. “What he says to you, that do”.
Well, dear friends, that is all I have to say. We have these two scenes of plenty, one involving a company of persons at the king’s table, eating bread continually; the other the opening of these storehouses, the only places where provision was. The death of Christ has laid bare the heart of God, and what a place of provision we find that to be! “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou wilt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures”, Psalm 36: 8.
Preaching at Grangemouth
19 May 1974